


Next Time, I'll Be the Hero in Your Heart

by AvaCelt



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-08
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-11 14:04:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1173940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaCelt/pseuds/AvaCelt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wu Fan doesn't know when his superstar life turns into a soap opera involving ex-hookers and fist fights, but it seems to happen right around the time Min Seok strolls in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Next Time, I'll Be the Hero in Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Title derived from the lyrics of EXO M's What is Love.

Wu Fan gets the news four weeks before a show in Macau.

He finds out on the day of a charity event being hosted by one of his sponsors, but he doesn’t think about it until after the show closes and he’s escorted out of the arena and its ten thousand spectators. How he managed to keep the news bottled up for the entirety of seventeen hours is something he doesn’t wish to decipher, but what he does know is that now he’s no longer Kris the Ballad Prince of Greater Asia. Not like he was ever Kris to begin with, but Kris the Canadian, Kris the Devilishly  _Handsome_  Canadian, is no longer just that. Wu Fan is no longer alone.

He has to meet his new partner (“A Korean composer and singer,” his manager whispered scandalously, “but he rarely performs for mainstream audiences. They say he’s performed in  _brothels._ ”) the next day.

It’s a rainy day, and Wu Fan still has sleep caked in his eye lids and fever dreams lurking behind his aviator shades even though it’s seven o’clock in the morning and there’s not an inkling of light in the sky. He could say that he’s excited to meet the supposedly amazing new singer/song artist, but then he’d be lying. Wu Fan, contrary to popular belief, has had enough experience (four times in the span of his nine year career) with collaborations to understand that they were meant to be one-show-stands. And this new person, this supposedly new “other half,” didn’t rustle his jimmies like it did the rest of his production crew. In fact, Wu Fan guesses the man could be as self-determined and utterly manipulative as the rest of his ballad collaborations of the past, so all in all, he doesn’t really care. But then again, he does faintly smile at having to know that, at least, he wouldn’t be alone for at least one more show.

Wu Fan’s partner is shorter by a head, and then some.

It takes a moment for his eyes to get adjusted to the other man, but the first thing he notices is the height comparison between them and how utterly precious it would become in the fanfics that would churn out the second they stepped on stage together. (Wu Fan takes an extra minute to ponder if whether or not the agency paired him up with this man solely  _because_  of the height and the amount of fanfiction it would produce).

Wu Fan takes off his shades and blinks and realizes that the man is  _older_  than him.

Now, Wu Fan’s no magician, but he can peg a person for their real selves very quickly. It’s the kind of intuition that’s brought him to where he stands today, and he takes pride in that. What he can’t seem to take pride in right now is that the man, who’s still a head and then some shorter than him, in front is at least a few months, if not a year, older than him. Worse, Wu Fan wants to cry, he looks _experienced_.

He thinks he can hear one of his coordi’s heart shattering into a million pieces because of the no-intra-company dating policy.

Kim Min Seok, also known as Xiumin in China’s seediest and most thriving underground host and hostess clubs, has dark circles and puffy bags underneath his doe-shaped eyes. The pallor of his skin is a sickly shade of white, as if the man only woke and prospered at night while sleeping away his days. Wu Fan doesn’t doubt it. He’d never been into a host or hostess bar, but by word-of-mouth, he knows that its most well-paid entertainers are more in-tune with their art than they are with their health. Wu Fan hopes that he’s mistaken, however, but the overall harshness of the older man’s collarbones and bony hands tells Wu Fan that he’s met his match.

“Kim Min Seok,” Kim Min Seok tells him in a way that not a lick of his ethnic Korean accent shows.

“Wu Fan,” Wu Fan tells him, because Kris is for the night, and Wu Fan right now is a bit more fascinated with his dead-eyed partner than he should be.

*******

“But why a brothel singer?”

The question becomes the hottest topic of the agency in a matter of minutes. Wu Fan assumes it’s because the topic is actually interesting, unlike the rest of the rumors running about (like how the president of his agency was in love with a southern-European Roma and how he planned to dump the company to his investors and run off with her to the Maldives). Wu Fan both likes and dislikes the attention the question has brought to his partner (whom he hasn’t seen since earlier this morning at their official meeting), but he blames the indecisiveness on the lack of sleep. He blinks. Sleep, Wu Fan thinks, is something he need. Wu Fan needs sleep, and Wu Fan has the day off, but he can’t sleep, now that dead-eyes’s scandalous history has taken over his senses. He decides he at least has the right to be annoyed.

Dead-eyes (because Wu Fan refuses to refer to him as Min Seok unless he’s in front of him) has hair as black as midnight and as flaky as the cornflakes he occasionally eats. Not that he’d ever take the time to pour milk over dead-eyes’s hair and proceed to eat it, but the strands were flakier than the flakiest of cornflakes. Wu Fan had sniffed a residual scent of cheap pomade earlier, and no intelligent coordi with half a head applied anything less than the specially designed brand, and now he surmised that it could only have been his new partner. Wu Fan narrows his eyes and crinkles his nose at the thought of having to share a stage with a man that was murdering his scalp and hair with cheap wax. But the darkness of the locks still pervade the general flakiness of the strands, and Wu Fan wonders how that came to be. The inkling to touch and caress the dark locks is an urge Wu Fan has to shut down as quickly as it came to be. He spies his reflection in a close-by mirror, and sees that he too is aging. At twenty-seven, Wu Fan still hasn’t had the chance to call someone a friend, and the one he thinks might be able to is rumored to be a performer at a whorehouse with nothing but cheap hair wax and dark eyes to his name. The realization makes him a bit sad.

*******

Wu Fan realizes Min Seok’s voice fluctuates like the weather (it’s sunny outside today, and just yesterday he was introduced to the man next to him while it had been pouring sheets). It’s deep and throaty one minute, but soft and lilting the next, and at one part, he holds out his notes for so long that Wu Fan breaks and stops just to see how much longer the man can go.

Wu Fan comes to the conclusion that Min Seok can last a rather unhealthy amount of time. The realization makes him smile, if vaguely so.

They’re forced to eat together because the show is a mere three and a half weeks away, and they have to practice twelve tracks as a duo and four singles (two from Wu Fan, and two from Min Seok). Wu Fan orders his regular from the catering personnel, while Min Seok gets a bottle of water and a plate of brown rice and chicken dipped in soy sauce. Wu Fan eats healthy, he’ll admit, but Min Seok eats  _frugally_ , like it’s his job to forsake every delicacy on the menu. Wu Fan will admit the scene is a bit shocking, watching a future star of mainstream media (already a star of the underground subculture) eat the food of farmers while his quiche sits primly with a glass of red wine next to it. Min Seok doesn’t talk while he eats, and that, Wu Fan surmises, is the worst part of the situation because not only is the older man super cheap, but also super respectful.

Wu Fan thinks the incoming migraine will require a heavy dosage of Aspirin and maybe a talk with Jesus.

*******

Wu Fan somewhat figures out how Min Seok went from being a brothel singer to being his partner. The catalyst is Min Seok’s personal assistant, a la the hooker who left his club and pimp and went off to aid his hero in his new life as a mainstream artist.

Wu Fan finds out Min Seok was already popular back in Korea almost twelve years ago, back when Wu Fan was a teenage idol. The Min Seok of the Old stood for one of the biggest Greater Asian agencies, and with the looks of the boy-next-door and the attitude of a leader, he made it big until he disappeared just after Wu Fan debuted in China and took the world by storm. Chanyeol, the former crossdresser who swore he looked better in a dress than half of China’s highest-paid female escorts, tells him how he was trafficked from one country to the next, until he ended up in Min Seok’s bar. Chanyeol tells him that Min Seok had a different story for every day on how he went from being a rising god of the east to an aimless peddler. Sometimes it’s because of his mother, Chanyeol tell him quietly. Debt, Chanyeol remembers. Then Chanyeol tells him that Min Seok sometimes tells him that he was kidnapped by sea monsters that brought him to China to pay for sins committed by his ancestors.

Wu Fan blinks and thinks that perhaps the years of forced servitude to the monsters of the Asian hierarchy has completely fried poor Chanyeol’s brains, but then he recalls the man with sickly, pale skin with a diet of a monk and the stare of a dead man. He switches the subject and asks Chanyeol about their past together, and Chanyeol happily babbles away about days when Min Seok took him out for ice cream against the wishes of the brothel guards, and how it would take one look and some teeth grinding for the elder to get him clothes that didn’t make him look like an oversized sex object. And then Chanyeol tells him that sleep was somewhat of a luxury, even on days when there was no work and sleep was all he had. Chanyeol tells him that Min Seok’s voice kept the demons away (“They still do, hyung,” Chanyeol gushes while sewing up the last bit of the rip his jacket had suffered.), and how his voice sounded like a chorus of a thousand heavenly angels. Chanyeol tells him that he began to sleep again when Min Seok walked in, and for that, he was most thankful.

Wu Fan decides he doesn’t have to hear any more than he already has, and politely leaves the younger man to his work. He sees Kim Min Seok’s figure fleet by, but instead of reaching out to him, Wu Fan lets it be. He guesses that if he ever wants to touch him, he’d have to learn to let him go first.

*******

The show in Macau is in three days, and they’re on a flight to the metropolis and Chanyeol’s mouth hasn’t closed since they boarded. Wu Fan’s not particularly pressed with the latter’s chattering, but what  _does_  irk him is how solemn Min Seok looks next to his tomfoolery while the coordi on the other side is struggling to get some air.

Wu Fan is in the seat across the isle, and he has a direct view of Min Seok’s quiet demeanor, of his absolute passivity to Chanyeol’s continuous shrieking and clapping of this and that. Soon, the entire passengership, which is only composed of the production crew and the agency’s people (because nine years of hit ballads and airport runway shots proved enough for his own, personal carrier-jet), sings along with whatever Chanyeol is saying, and the only two with their mouths entirely clipped are him and Min Seok.

But Wu Fan is intently staring at Min Seok, while Min Seok stares into space and occasionally blinks to prove that he’s still a live. How alive is something Wu Fan intends to find out later.

It’s not like Kris is new to this, because he isn’t. They sing, in harmony, with duality, with an essence that sends the crowd cheering and politics soaring. Kris doesn’t know how it got to where it ended up going, but it did and when it did, Kris died and Wu Fan came to the stage and Wu Fan  _never_  came to the stage.

Yet as Min Seok, stage name: Xiu, finished up the last of his notes, Wu Fan’s breath hitched and he stared longer than he’d meant to. But that’s not what makes the difference, Wu Fan thinks. What makes the difference is when Min Seok finishes and stares  _back_ , and he stares back as a human being with emotions, and actions, and movement, and _life_.

Dead-eyes is gone that night, and so is Kris.

*******

Min Seok’s words are like water. They’re fluid, like the liquid in a lake, but fast and clipped like the raindrops on a windy morning. They’re cold, like in the fall, but smooth, like in the spring.

And his words are like his kisses, and when those kisses touch the unmarred skin of Wu Fan’s neck, his chest, his stomach, and there’s a fire that comes to life that wishes only to be quenched by the fluidity and motion that is Min Seok in his truest form. Min Seok’s fingers drifting on Wu Fan’s lips, down his arms, his legs, his chest. His teeth dragging down on the skin of Wu Fan’s back. His hands gripping the firm globes of Wu Fan’s bare buttocks. There’s a push and Wu Fan groans into the sheets him as he’s taken from behind, but there are reassuring hands pressing gently into the curve of his hips as he pushes back earnestly.

There’s a rhythm, there’s a flow. Wu Fan’s felt fingers tug on his hair before, teeth leave marks on his skin, people leave after they’re finished, whether it be man or woman, because Wu Fan is good for only night and nothing more.

But Min Seok is faithful to him, even if it’s only in his dreams, and every night, Wu Fan goes to sleep knowing he’s going to wake up with mist in his eyes and longing in his belly. One of Min Seok’s hands will move from gripping his hip to gripping his shoulder, and Wu Fan will raise his head and his spoken desires will echo throughout his dream’s chamber, but Min Seok does not judge. He doesn’t silence Wu Fan, doesn’t taunt Wu Fan, and instead he tugs fervently for Wu Fan to sing louder and clearer while they push against each other.

Wu Fan always finishes first, and after Min Seok’s slipped out, they face each other and their lips are mere centimeters apart before everything ends. Wu Fan wakes up, and he’s longing for that one last kiss, but it never comes because it’s not real. Nothing is real.

*******

Chanyeol pats his shoulder and tells him Min Seok doesn’t date often, and when he does, he does it discreetly. In fact, Chanyeol admits he’s only  _heard_ about the man taking lovers, but was never actually present to witness one take Min Seok’s hand. But then again, Chanyeol lived in whorehouses for most of his life while Min Seok sang in them, so the persons who came and went were hardly dating material.

But still, it looks as if dead-eyes could love, and Wu Fan often wonders what if would feel like if Min Seok could love him one day.

*******

Wu Fan’s seen blood before. More than often, younger trainees would take blades to their wrists, or bottles to their throats when things became extremely stressful. But Wu Fan’s also witnessed a person jump off their balcony and end up ten stories down to the cement road. Wu Fan’s watched muggings happen in his earlier days when the driver needed a cigarette break. Wu Fan’s watched people scuffle over something as meaningless as a bottle of beer.

What Wu Fan’s never witnessed before is man beating another man half to death.

It’s been three months since Min Seok’s joined him, and one since Wu Fan’s lust had transformed into something even more taboo than falling in lust with your co-worker. The day’s fairly chilly, and it would get colder in the evening, so all kinds of business would settled to take place inside. Wu Fan takes a nap and works on a few songs and goes over costumes and make-up designs with his stylists while a light rain patters outside. Once or twice, he sees Chanyeol briskly go from room to room, up the stairs, down the elevator, and even out of a storage closet. OK, maybe not once or twice, and more like eleven or fifteen. His colleagues are visibly perturbed, and Wu Fan wonders if Min Seok had forgotten to get Chanyeol on the company payroll and was now suffering the wrath of a depressed and penniless ex-hooker who knew how to sew.

But that’s not all. Wu Fan’s manager pops his head into the practice studio where a trainee is filling in as a make-believe Min Seok while Wu Fan is practicing one of their new duets.

“There’s someone here to see Min Seok,” his manager shudders in horror.

And when Wu Fan’s manager is two steps away from pissing his pants, Wu Fan pulls on his Kris mask, and makes his way downstairs to defend his nighttime visitor’s honor.

Except Min Seok’s already down there, it’s a little after seven, and the place is pitch black with hardly any saesangs ever since the company invested in a steel and iron barricade and decided they wanted the company headquarters in the middle of thick forest.

Min Seok is off company property, the sleek car parked right in front of the baricade, but enough feet away to not be considered trespassing. That’s good because Min Seok is in the middle of punching through someone’s face on the muddy ground below, and Wu Fan yells for someone to open the gates but no one will. He doesn’t expect to get pushed aside and for someone to sprint in front of him, but someone does. It’s only after Wu Fan’s regained his footing that he realizes it’s Chanyeol and that the young man his bawling his eyes out while screaming for Min Seok to stop.

Min Seok doesn’t, and Wu Fan realizes later that he  _can’t_. Fists are flying, fingers are clutching and scratching, legs are kicking, and Min Seok is seething with such a ferocity that someone begins to retch behind him. Min Seok’s enclosed hand meets the man’s nose, his eyes, and Wu Fan can see blood mixing with snot and rain while the man underneath Min Seok gurgles incoherently. A second man enters the foray and kicks Min Seok in the ribs, but that doesn’t throw him off, so the second man takes a crowbar from inside the car and smashes it against the back of Min Seok’s skull. The crack is audible even in the midst of all the screaming and sobbing.

Wu Fan watches hands abruptly soften and a pale, thin body fall away while the man with the crowbar drops his weapon and begin to drag away the man with the bashed-in face. That’s when the gate begins to slide open, but by then, Chanyeol’s passed out on the ground and the guards are too late to catch up to the car that skids out of sight and into the darkness of the forest.

*******

In Wu Fan’s dreams, there’s a place that is as quiet as the lake back home, and a mountain stands guard in front of it, so when Wu Fan recedes back into his subconscious, he always takes a trip there. It’s his quiet-place in a land filled to the brim with regrets and monsters. There’s also that other place, that pocket of room where Min Seok makes loves to him, but that’s long gone.

Min Seok is long gone.

The trek from disbelief to acceptance was an arduous one, Wu Fan remembers, but it was a necessary.

Wu Fan’s recalls having an aching in heart more painful than anything he’s ever imagined. It wasn’t an affliction that tortured him those weeks following the incident, of course, but mere residual regret. He regretted not having touched a small, oval face with chapped lips to match and ruddy brown eyes. In the beginning, he had fever dreams that increased in intensity with every passing night, causing him to awake with tears on his face and a scream stuck in his throat while the back of his lids had a hollow man’s hollow face stapled to them.

He regretted not having felt the tenderness of sunken cheeks and the pleasant curves of bony hips. For a while, his suffering carried on to his music, but eventually that passed and Wu Fan’s grief disappointed into his past, and nowadays, he thinks about writing about nature and his connection to it like his early music.

There are no more collaborations, and the president doesn’t run off with his lover, and the incident gets buried underneath the company’s foot like all other distasteful events that could affect their stock market standings. A discreet hospital carrier had been called in that night, and two bodies were wheeled away, never to be seen again. All employees, even the ones that were no where near the scene, are told to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and Wu Fan’s do their duty because there’s no where else to go and no one else to turn to. This is all he has, and it’s all he will ever have.

Wu Fan hadn’t even been awake at the time they’d cleaned out Chanyeol and Min Seok’s rooms and sent away their belongings to whatever hospital they were dumped in.

Years float by, and Wu Fan learns from his people that Chanyeol had woken up and disappeared, whereas a Kim Min Seok did not exist in any official papers, and that Xiu, Kris’s duet partner, had quit the business and disappeared after he was convicted of plagiarism.

Of course, the person that filed the plagiarism charges had been paid off by the president’s personal attorney, and of course, Kris had to talk to the man earlier to help solidify the story so Xiu disappeared from the public eye for good, and with a bad enough reputation to boot so that not even the most devoted wouldn’t go looking for him.

Wu Fan doesn’t know if Min Seok is dead. What he does know is that there are multiple websites dedicated to hating him for his plagiarized songs, and Wu Fan had to instill multiple proxies to get around to being fully anonymous before posting his own blurbs about how the former star had been forced into retiring and that his music was his own.

Min Seok’s music was his own, just like his words were. But Min Seok is no more, and Wu Fan doesn’t have any link to find him with. More than likely, he’s six feet under in a John Doe’s grave, and there are the regular monks who pray for his lost soul like they do other, unnamed deceased persons.

Min Seok is gone, and Wu Fan has nothing left.

*******

Wu Fan retires at thirty-four with twelve full-length albums, three extended plays, a host of musical numbers he’s penned and performed for movies, television shows, and plays, and then some. His bank accounts are lined to the brim, and he has enough to live luxuriously for the rest of his life and still have some left over for charity. Instead, he sets out to search for Chanyeol.

Min Seok is dead, and Wu Fan isn’t stupid enough to believe that a crushed skull is salvageable. He’d seen the metal hit soft flesh, causing the body to slump away as if it was never truly a person, but a marionette instead. Min Seok is dead, and Wu Fan could never tell him how beautiful his voice was, or how pretty his natural eyelashes were, or how smart he looked in a three piece suit. Min Seok is dead, but that’s OK, because Wu Fan is alive and he’s going to find out where he’s buried, and he’s going to apologize and make things right.

His manager quits the same day he retires, and his stylist comes knocking on his hotel door a week later. Two other coordis follow, and suddenly Wu Fan is employing an entourage of people who considered him a friend rather than a charge in a sprawling, twenty-six floor agency, and Wu Fan learns that he’s not as alone as he seems.

And that’s good, because when he finds Chanyeol, he’s going to tell him he’s not alone either.

*******

They find him him a dress shop in Tibet, by a lake that’s overlooked by a mountain.

He stitches and tailors traditional wedding garments, and designs casual clothes for himself and his favorite customers during his free time. It’s only by a tip from Wu Fan’s manager, now personal secretary, that they’re able to find him. Wu Fan didn’t even think to know the old man had a nurse contact somewhere.

Chanyeol greets him with the brightest of smiles, and Wu Fan doesn’t know how or why, since he more or less aided his agency in covering up Min Seok’s murder.

But Chanyeol squeals, jumps up from his station in the front, and runs to hug Wu Fan and the coordis. He shakes hands with the managers and ushers them into the backroom where there’s water and snacks already stocked for the two or three employees of the little shop. He babbles on about all the little things he’s discovered here, and Wu Fan’s people are happy, and  _he’s_  happy because they’re happy, and maybe Min Seok’s soul will rest in peace since his charge is safe and sound.

Wu Fan offers the man to come into the mainland and stay at his cottage for some time, but the man declines politely, as Wu Fan had guessed, but that’s OK, because at least he’s safe. Wu Fan knows where he is, so he can help him financially, and maybe, one day, Chanyeol will get married, and Wu Fan will be there to help him and his new family. It’s the least he can do.

They say goodbye a few hours later, and Chanyeol asks them to come back, but Wu Fan knows it’s only out of courtesy.

Wu Fan is in Qingdao and signing for his new book on music theory when one of his coordis gets a phone call, and takes a step outside. It’s been a month since they visited Chanyeol, and he’s gotten no where with his search for Min Seok’s burial place, and he’s still too ashamed to ask Chanyeol. But he can do this, so he wrote his book, and continues to shuffle money to his contacts to deepen the search.

When the signing ends, his manager drives them to a private eatery. They sit on the balcony and take their meal, and even take a quiet smoke, even if Wu Fan pretends with his cigar since he doesn’t indulge in the habit.

The coordi breaks the news and tells them Chanyeol would love for them to come over before the first frost of the season.

It’s an official invitation, and Wu Fan cannot say no, and within the week, he pushes book signings up two weeks, packs his bags, and has his entire team on a private jet back to the little shop and the land where the mountains overlooked the lake.

Chanyeol expects the entire party, and so his hut becomes theirs, and Wu Fan and the rest make sure to make Chanyeol’s life as smooth as possible, because they’re guests and Chanyeol is a gentle soul.

There is small talk and lots of laughing. More than often, Wu Fan finds himself shy away from the chattering group and end up by the lake’s grassy edge, overlooking the blue water and white mountain up ahead. It’s a beautiful sight. The land is bathed in mouisture, and the foliage cascades over the curves and grooves, allowing the greenery to dip and rise in song-like motion. It rains sometimes, but it’s light rain, and the chill permeated Wu Fan’s body, but never his soul. There’s a warmth that resides inside, and it resides there with Min Seok’s voice, Min Seok’s motions, Min Seok’s devotion. More than once, they’ll find him soaked to the bone, but Wu Fan would be smiling, smiling because somewhere above, Min Seok’s happy.

*******

“His parents owed a debt.”

Wu Fan sits still and listens, because that’s all he can do. The others circle around Chanyeol, hot cups of tea in their hands, listening intently as Chanyeol tells the truth.

Min Seok’s parents owed a debt that resulted him in being kidnapped and then transported away from Seoul. It wasn’t vengeance, Chanyeol says, it was simply a good move for business. Min Seok had a beautiful voice and an adorable face, and both worked for underground clubs. Unfortunately, despite his earnings, the loan sharks’ debts could not be paid off, so they took what they needed to consider it a finished account. And so Min Seok was stolen, thrown on a boat, and pulled away to a faraway land.

Chanyeol tells them Min Seok only ever sang for his owners. When he wasn’t singing, he was learning how to fight from underground trainers. When he wasn’t doing that, he was writing his notes, his own patters- his own songs. Eventually, he earned his freedom, and moved to another club, and then another, and then another, until he ended up where Chanyeol would eventually come to prostitute himself. Before Chanyeol, Min Seok had sung in three other illegal music clubs, worked as a bodyguard in two other brothels, and even cooked in a bar restaurant. Chanyeol’s future brothel was his final rest stop before he dived into music for good, and left to perform in legitimate, yet seedy, music halls and host and hostess bars.

Min Seok sang and he sang, but he also punched, kicked, and killed. That was a former owner, Chanyeol sobs softly. Not Min Seok’s, he assures. That woman who had his passport and his other documents explained that as soon as he earned enough to pay off the debt, he was free to go. Min Seok had understood it perfectly, and managed to be one of the few who didn’t feel the back of her hand on his face, or the end of a whip on his legs.

Min Seok could have left and gone home after he’d paid off the debt, but he didn’t. Instead, he moved on to other clubs, and this time, employers.

Everything he owned, he carried, Chanyeol explains. The furniture, the television, the utensils were all rented out. Only the clothes on his back, the few in his duffel, his official documents, and the money in his briefcase were all he had. Then Chanyeol came along, and suddenly, Chanyeol’s whole life became a carry-and-go routine too.

The men who’d come to the company that evening so many years ago was Chanyeol’s last john. Unfortunately for him, he hadn’t known that his pimp had sold him to said john, and he’d fled with Min Seok before he could find out. The men had come to collect Chanyeol.

And Min Seok had died to stop it, is all Wu Fan could surmise.

Chanyeol can’t bring himself to stop crying, so Wu Fan goes outside to breathe in the clean air of the lake. The mountain is almost invisible in pitch black air, but he can still recognize the contours of the giant overlooking Chanyeol’s tortured soul, and suddenly, Wu Fan understands why he can’t find Min Seok’s body anywhere.

Chanyeol had most likely buried him in a place dear to him, but also a place where he would remain undisturbed. And what would Wu Fan accomplish by clearing his name? Absolutely nothing. Min Seok had died doing what he thought was best. If he had a care for the world, he would have let Chanyeol get taken away, and continued on with his business without looking back. Instead, he’d risked his career and his life for someone with no hope and no future.

And dead as he is, Wu Fan sees that he’d still accomplished his goal. Now, Chanyeol has a home and a life, and a future brighter than any other Wu Fan had ever seen. Chanyeol is happy, and he’s protected by the mountain overlooking the lake, and he sews dresses and trousers, and other clothes for all kinds of people. If that isn’t the kind of peace someone deserves, then Wu Fan doesn’t know a damn thing.

And even though Min Seok is dead, it’s OK. Wu Fan will leave his own unfinished music with Chanyeol, and ask put them on whatever mound of earth Min Seok is buried underneath. He hopes Min Seok will take a look at them and finish them for him in heaven.

It’s all he has left to give him.

*******

Chanyeol won’t take his money, or his lavish gifts, or even the unfinished music, but Wu Fan leaves it all in his hut anyway before stealing away with his team. Chanyeol reaches them when they’ve already landed, and he’s screeching for them to come take all this stuff back, but Wu Fan laughs it off and tells him they’ll be back next time to add more to his misery.

Wu Fan signs books, ends up on television shows, and does some performances. He visits Chanyeol often with his crew, and even manages to persuade the man into coming to one of his charity concerts in mainland. Wu Fan turns thirty-five on a crispy, November evening, and drinks in the air to commemorate the occasion. An hour later, he’s bombarded with a huge party and too many photographers, and Wu Fan has enough good food and alcohol in his stomach to put him to sleep for a month.

A week later, Chanyeol calls to invite him and his makeshift family to come watch a show in a newly opened restaurant. Wu Fan is excited to join in because he’s hungry for some quiet time with Mr. Mountain and Lady Lake, as his associated tease him relentlessly, and since the search for Min Seok’s burial place had been ceased the year before, things had taken a turn for the better for them, and life became easy.

Easy and peaceful. Wu Fan can’t wait to visit.

They make it to his hut by the time the darkness begin to creep in, and Chanyeol’s barking for them to clean up or they’ll miss the evening’s first performance, and he’d spent months preparing the costumes too! They’re back out the door in less than twenty, deadlines ingrained into their beings from years in the mainstream music industry, and pile into Wu Fan’s rented car so they can get to the small eatery faster.

It ends up being less an eatery, and more a mini-club and restaurant. Youth from surrounding towns and villages pile in. Wu Fan spies many of the girls, and some women, in chic, 1920’s Shanghai fashion, while boys and men don sleek tuxedos and suits. Some wear dress shirts, casual trousers, and shiny loafers, while other flaunt the whole three piece, along with glinting cuffs and felt fedoras. Wu Fan looks at himself and sees he has an untucked light green button down on, and worn blue jeans. His sneakers aren’t particularly clean either, and he’s old enough to be most of the partygoers uncle.

“Come on!”

Wu Fan blinks at Chanyeol’s recognizable screech, and mumbles an apology before awkwardly following him and the rest into the concrete structure. When he enters, he’s bombarded with bright lights in the center and dim lights surrounding it. The stage is empty, but the orchestra in front of it is already playing its warm-up songs. Some people have already begun moving on the dance floor, while others mill around the non-alcoholic wet bar serving a variety of fruit drinks. Wu Fan ends up sipping on cold apple cider while taking his seat in a far off table on the corner. He only lasts ten minutes before Chanyeol, handsome in a pressed navy blue suit and brown shoes, drags him away to a table in the front that’s specially reserved for them. He breathes shakily and drinks his juice. And he waits.

The lights dim even more, and the middle stage lights brighten to highlight the orchestra and closed curtains. Abruptly, the stage’s strongest lights go out and a softer light shines on the performer who’d appeared in the split second between the bright light and soft light. The crowd quiets down, and in exactly sixty seconds, the orchestra begins again, but this time with something familiar.

Wu Fan drops his glass.

*******

Min Seok’s face is slightly slack on one side, so when he sings or talks, there’s a rigidity in his countenance that makes him look even more menacing than before. His skin is still a sickly shade of off white, but his eye lashes are long and full, and there’s an air of calm around him that Wu Fan still has trouble fathoming.

He’s aged gracelessly, Wu Fan knows, but that slackness, the harshness in his figure seems to have gotten stronger, so even though he looks his thirty-six years, he’s still as strong as ever. And apparently, so is his skull. Perhaps it was luck, or maybe crowbar decided it wouldn’t aid in taking out dead-eyes.

Dead-eyes. Min Seok’s are still dead, but they’re also alive. He doesn’t look at Wu Fan once, even though he sings his song.

 _Their_  song. Min Seok did finish it, after all.

When the performance ends, the dancing begins and the food is distributed before the second performance to take place after dessert. All the while, Wu Fan keeps his lips tight and his eyes down as his friends and Chanyeol chatter endlessly while gushing and bombarding each other with questions and answers. He eats his food sparingly, and watches the second and final performance, hears another one of their songs, and politely takes his leave after the stage’s light goes out to declare the end of the show.

He ends up taking a cab back to Chanyeol’s hut, but instead of going inside, he takes a hike further up the lake bank and ends up in a patch of land surrounded by tiny flowers. They would die in the following weeks, and once the season’s first frost settled on the land, the water would turn to ice.

The crew drives in eventually, and Wu Fan finds himself back to the hut with Chanyeol outside and shivering in the cold. He apologizes profusely for being out so late, and doesn’t let Chanyeol explain. It’s OK, he knows, because Min Seok has his own life, and just like there are periods at the end of a sentence, there are periods in a person’s life. Wu Fan was no doubt a short one in Min Seok’s, but it just happened to be that for Wu Fan, Min Seok turned out to be an entire song.

They say goodbye a few days later, and throughout the rest of the visit, Wu Fan hadn’t let Chanyeol explain, even once. It’s Wu Fan’s personal choice. It’s not something he would usually indulge in, being left in the dark, but for this situation, it’s OK. Wu Fan’s OK. Min Seok is alive and he owns his own club, and he’s going to sing and throw shows and earn a quiet and honest living. Wu Fan will return to the mainland and do what he’s always done, and finally move back to Vancouver in the beginning of February. It’s OK, because that’s life, and Min Seok is alive, so there’s really nothing wrong.

Wu Fan gives Chanyeol and especially long hug. Then he walks away.

*******

Alas, his crew could only follow him so far. Wu Fan dissolves the team the following week, and finishes his contracts before packing up for good.

His jet lands on a private air strip, and a discreet car takes him to his mansion on the outskirts of the city, surrounded by whatever’s left of the green. He sees family members, old friends, people he’s rarely conversed with in the past two decades, but it’s home, and they’re a part of it no matter what Wu Fan thinks. Things die down within the week, and Wu Fan is alone and lying on his too big of a bed, his eyes fixated on the silk canopy above, and wonders why he didn’t just get a regular bed. Someone rings the doorbell downstairs and he hopes the workers can shoo them away, because the bed’s really comfy, even if it is huge.

But apparently, a nap is not in Wu Fan’s fate, because Mary opens the door and asks for his presence down in the sitting room. It must be a journalist, Wu Fan thinks. He doesn’t like those anymore.

It’s not, for one, and Min Seok looks oddly different in blue jeans, a t-shirt, and a brown jacket. He holds out his hand for Wu Fan to shake, and he does, before they’re both sitting in front of each other, cups of steaming tea between them. Their exchange is oddly soft, and they talk about each other’s lives in the past eight or so years, about what’s going on right now, and really, whether or not those songs worked on opening night. Wu Fan realizes that Min Seok can smile, and when he does, a thousand suns seem to melt the cold air in the room while a fire blooms in his chest. Min Seok talks about his club, his new friends, about Chanyeol’s girlfriend, and the dojo he’s also opened back in Tibet. Wu Fan’s crew still visits, and Chanyeol still makes dresses and suits and a myriad of other clothes, and Min Seok is always somewhere around the corner, either working or resting.

Wu Fan understands that though he may have physically aged gracelessly, Min Seok was still the most beautiful man he’d ever laid eyes on. So when the older man invites him back for a function, Wu Fan nods and offers his place for the night, but is politely turned down, yet before Min Seok leaves, there’s a piece of paper with his phone number on it and its left in Wu Fan’s hand.

*******

And what is there left to say, Wu Fan thinks. Nothing much, at least that much he knows.

It doesn’t take long for him to fall into Min Seok’s arms, and Min Seok, by the looks of it, has been expecting it to happen earlier. He ravishes Wu Fan near the river bank on their first night together. They’re obscured from others in their little tent out by the water, and it’s cold and Wu Fan hates to lay down on anything other than a bed, but Min Seok holds him as if he’s something precious, and Wu Fan lets him because he’s waited far too long to be touched like this. They rut against each other earnestly in the dark; Wu Fan’s cries drift in harmony with the songs of the remaining birds outside. When they’re finished, Wu Fan lies his head on his chest and falls into the sweetest sleep he’s had in years.

And what is there left to say, but than to recognize that Wu Fan comes back. He comes back, and they have to build a house with plumbing, and showers, and ten bedrooms, and a hundred other luxuries Wu Fan can’t live without. But that’s the point, because Wu Fan is one kind of person, and Min Seok another, and somewhere along the way, they fell in love, so their differences must have some purpose.

Wu Fan spends his days reading and occasionally writing songs, and Min Seok works on establishment and his music, and at times, they forget these things and make love on their bed. Min Seok’s a lecher, Wu Fan learns, and can’t keep his hands from groping Wu Fan while he’s cooking, or taking him by surprise when he’s reading a book, or feeling up chest when he’s surfing the web, and fondling his thighs under the table when they have guests over. And Wu Fan can’t help but find this oddly endearing, since he must have exercised the greatest of self-control back in the days they were performing together. Not that Wu Fan would have minded being cornered by a man a foot shorter than him, and then proceed to lasciviously make out like teenagers.

But Wu Fan likes that he didn’t know that, and makes it his mission to find out all the little things that make Min Seok what he is.

But for now, he can settle for another kiss.

*******


End file.
